In a significant distinction, the Court validated Congress’s power to pass the healthcare law under its taxing power—an argument that President Obama had downplayed because taxes are politically unpopular.

“Taxes that seek to influence conduct are nothing new,” the Court noted. Congress’s federal taxing power is generally wider and less contested than the commerce power, under Court precedent, so the ruling upholds the core of the healthcare law without pinning the opinion to limits on Congress’s commerce power. (The Court did hold that the mandate would violate the Commerce Clause, but that did not resolve the case, since a majority of the Court upheld the mandate under the alternative taxing power.)

"The Government asks us to read the mandate not as ordering individuals to buy insurance," the Court explained, "but rather as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product" (emphasis added). That distinction matters to the Constitution, the Court stressed, because Congress may reward people through taxes for actions that it might otherwise not be able to compel. According to Justice Roberts’ opinion, the government does not endanger liberty as much when it makes policy through the tax code:

Although the breadth of Congress’s power to tax is greater than its power to regulate commerce, the taxing power does not give Congress the same degree of control over individual behavior (emphasis added). Once we recognize that Congress may regulate a particular decision under the Commerce Clause, the Federal Government can bring its full weight to bear. Congress may simply command individuals to do as it directs. An individual who disobeys may be subjected to criminal sanctions. Those sanctions can include not only fines and imprisonment, but all the attendant consequences of being branded a criminal: deprivation of otherwise protected civil rights, such as the right to bear arms or vote in elections; loss of employment opportunities; social stigma; and severe disabilities in other controversies, such as custody or immigration disputes.

While this ruling is huge political news, validating the largest domestic achievement of President Obama’s presidency, it does not significantly alter Supreme Court precedent or the powers reserved for the Congress. For all the political attacks on the Affordable Health Care Act, a year ago, few legal scholars took the constitutional challenge seriously. Today’s opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, essentially endorses the current status quo, which enables Congress to use its taxing power to shape national policy and to incentivize certain behavior. It remains to be seen, however, whether the Court’s alternative approach to the law—which would have struck down the mandate under the Commerce Power—will be used later to limit Congress’s national power or curb progressive legislation.

The opinion is available here and The Nation is streaming live video coverage here. Lyle Denniston, an attorney who writes for SCOTUSblog, also provides this guide to reading the opinion.

This post has been updated.

Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com.
Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent.
He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign.
As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.